In Kedar's Tents

‘Who knows? the man is proven by the hour.’

After the great storm came a calm almost as startling.  It seemed indeed as if Nature stood abashed and silent before the results of her sudden rage.  Day after day the sun glared down from a cloudless sky, and all Castile was burnt brown as a desert.  In the streets of Madrid there arose a hot dust and the subtle odour of warm earth that rarely meets the nostrils in England.  It savoured of India and other sun-steeped lands where water is too precious to throw upon the roads.

Those who could, remained indoors or in their shady patios until the heat of the day was past; and such as worked in the open lay unchallenged in the shade from midday till three o’clock.  During those days military operations were almost suspended, although the heads of departments were busy enough in their offices.  The confusion of war, it seemed, was past, and the sore-needed peace was immediately turned to good account.  The army of the Queen Regent was indeed in an almost wrecked condition, and among the field officers jealousy and backbiting, which had smouldered through the war-time, broke out openly.  General Vincente was rarely at home, and Estella passed this time in quiet seclusion.  Coming as she did from Andalusia, she was accustomed to an even greater heat, and knew how to avoid the discomfort of it.

She was sitting one afternoon, with open windows and closed jalousies, during the time of the siesta, when the servant announced Father Concha.

The old priest came into the room wiping his brow with simple ill manners.

‘You have been hurrying and have no regard for the sun,’ said Estella.

‘You need not find shelter for an old ox,’ replied Concha, seating himself.  ‘It is the young ones that expose themselves unnecessarily.’

Estella glanced at him sharply but said nothing.  He sat, handkerchief in hand, and stared at a shaft of sunlight that lay across the floor from a gap in the jalousies.  From the street under the windows came the distant sounds of traffic and the cries of the vendors of water, fruit, and newspapers.

Father Concha looked puzzled, and seemed to be seeking his way out of a difficulty.  Estella sat back in her chair, half hidden by her slow-waving, black fan.  There is no pride so difficult as that which is unconscious of its own existence, no heart so hard to touch as that which has thrown its stake and asks neither sympathy nor admiration from the outside world.  Concha glanced at Estella and wondered if he had been mistaken.  There was in the old man’s heart, as indeed there is in nearly all human hearts, a thwarted instinct.  How many are there with maternal instincts who have no children; how many a poet has been lost by the crying need of hungry mouths!  It was a thwarted instinct that made the old priest busy himself with the affairs of other people, and always of young people.

‘I came hoping to see your father,’ he said at length, blandly untruthful.  ‘I have just seen Conyngham, in whom we are all interested, I think.  His lack of caution is singular.  I have been trying to persuade him not to do something most rash and imprudent.  You remember the incident in your garden at Ronda—a letter which he gave to Julia?’

‘Yes,’ answered Estella quietly, ‘I remember.’

‘For some reason which he did not explain I understand that he is desirous of regaining possession of that letter, and now Julia, writing from Toledo, tells him that she will give it to him if he will go there and fetch it.  The Toledo road, as you will remember, is hardly to be recommended to Mr. Conyngham.’

‘But Julia wishes him no harm,’ said Estella.

‘My child, rarely trust a political man and never a political woman.  If Julia wished him to have the letter she could have sent it to him by post.  But Conyngham, who is all eagerness, must needs refuse to listen to any argument, and starts this afternoon for Toledo—alone.  He has not even his servant Concepçion Vara, who has suddenly disappeared, and a woman who claims to be the scoundrel’s wife from Algeciras has been making inquiries at Conyngham’s lodging.  A hen’s eyes are where her eggs lie.  I offered to go to Toledo with Conyngham, but he laughed at me for a useless old priest, and said that the saddle would gall me.’

He paused, looking at her beneath his shaggy brows, knowing, as he had always known, that this was a woman beyond his reach—cleverer, braver, of a higher mind than her sisters—one to whom he might perchance tender some small assistance, but nothing better.  For women are wiser in their generation than men, and usually know better what is for their own happiness.  Estella returned his glance with steady eyes.

‘He has gone,’ said Concha.  ‘I have not been sent to tell you that he is going.’

‘I did not think that you had,’ she answered.

‘Conyngham has enemies in this country,’ continued the priest, ‘and despises them—a mistake to which his countrymen are singularly liable.  He has gone off on this foolish quest without preparation or precaution.  Toledo is, as you know, a hotbed of intrigue and dissatisfaction.  All the malcontents in Spain congregate there, and Conyngham would do well to avoid their company.  Who lies down with dogs gets up with fleas.’

He paused, tapping his snuffbox, and at that moment the door opened to admit General Vincente.

‘Oh! the Padre!’ cried the cheerful soldier.  ‘But what a sun, eh?  It is cool here, however, and Estella’s room is always a quiet one.’

He touched her cheek affectionately, and drew forward a low chair wherein he sat, carefully disposing of the sword that always seemed too large for him.

‘And what news has the Padre?’ he asked, daintily touching his brow with his pocket-handkerchief.

‘Bad,’ growled Concha, and then told his tale over again in a briefer, blunter manner.  ‘It all arises,’ he concluded, ‘from my pestilential habit of interfering in the affairs of other people.’

‘No,’ said General Vincente; ‘it arises from Conyngham’s pestilential habit of acquiring friends wherever he goes.’

The door was opened again, and a servant entered.

‘Excellency,’ he said, ‘a man called Concepçion Vara, who desires a moment.’

‘What did I tell you?’ said the General to Concha.  ‘Another of Conyngham’s friends.  Spain is full of them.  Let Concepçion Vara come to this room.’

The servant looked slightly surprised, and retired.  If, however, this manner of reception was unusual, Concepçion was too finished a man of the world to betray either surprise or embarrassment.  By good fortune he happened to be wearing a coat.  His flowing unstarched shirt was as usual spotless, he wore a flower in the ribbon of the hat carried jauntily in his hand, and about his person in the form of handkerchief and faja were those touches of bright colour by means of which he so irresistibly attracted the eye of the fair.

‘Excellency,’ he murmured, bowing on the threshold; ‘Reverendo,’ with one step forward and a respectful semi-religious inclination of the head towards Concha; ‘Señorita!’  The ceremony here concluded with a profound obeisance to Estella full of gallantry and grave admiration.  Then he stood upright, and indicated by a pleasant smile that no one need feel embarrassed, that in fact this meeting was most opportune.

‘A matter of urgency, Excellency,’ he said confidentially to Vincente.  ‘I have reason to suspect that one of my friends—in fact, the Señor Conyngham, with whom I am at the moment in service—happens to be in danger.’

‘Ah! what makes you suspect that, my friend?’

Concepçion waved his hand lightly, as if indicating that the news had been brought to him by the birds of the air.

‘When one goes into the café,’ he said, ‘one is not always so particular—one associates with those who happen to be there—muleteers, diligencia-drivers, bull-fighters, all and sundry, even contrabandistas.’

He made this last admission with a face full of pious toleration, and Father Concha laughed grimly.

‘That is true, my friend,’ said the General, hastening to cover the priest’s little lapse of good manners, ‘and from these gentlemen—honest enough in their way, no doubt—you have learnt—?’

‘That the Señor Conyngham has enemies in Spain.’

‘So I understand; but he has also friends?’

‘He has one,’ said Vara, taking up a fine, picturesque attitude, with his right hand at his waist where the deadly knife was concealed in the rolls of his faja.

‘Then he is fortunate,’ said the General, with his most winning smile; ‘why do you come to me, my friend.’

‘I require two men,’ answered Concepçion airily, ‘that is all.’

‘Ah!  What sort of men.  Guardias Civiles?’

‘The Holy Saints forbid!  Honest soldiers, if it please your Excellency.  The Guardia Civil!  See you, Excellency.’

He paused, shaking his outspread hand from side to side, palm downwards, fingers apart, as if describing a low level of humanity.

‘A brutal set of men,’ he continued; ‘with the finger ever on the trigger and the rifle ever loaded.  Pam! and a life is taken—many of my friends—at least, many persons I have met—in the café!’

‘It is better to give him his two men,’ put in Father Concha, in his atrocious English, speaking to the General.  ‘The man is honest in his love of Conyngham, if in nothing else.’

‘And if I accord you these two men, my friend,’ said the General, from whose face Estella’s eyes had never moved, ‘will you undertake that Mr. Conyngham comes to no harm?’

‘I will arrange it,’ replied Concepçion, with an easy shrug of the shoulders.  ‘I will arrange it, never fear.’

‘You shall have two men,’ said General Vincente, drawing a writing-case towards himself and proceeding to write the necessary order.  ‘Men who are known to me personally.  You can rely upon them at all times.’

‘Since they are friends of his Excellency’s,’ interrupted Concepçion with much condescension, ‘that suffices.’

‘He will require money,’ said Estella in English—her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed.  For she came of a fighting race, and her repose of manner, the dignity which sat rather strangely on her slim young shoulders, were only signs of that self-control which had been handed down to her through the ages.

The General nodded as he wrote.

‘Take that to headquarters,’ he said, handing the papers to Concepçion, ‘and in less than half an hour your men will be ready.  Mr. Conyngham is a friend of mine, as you know, and any expenses incurred on his behalf will be defrayed by myself—’

Concepçion held up his hand.

‘It is unnecessary, Excellency,’ he said.  ‘At present Mr. Conyngham has funds.  Only yesterday he gave me money.  He liquidated my little account.  It has always been a jest between us—that little account.’

He laughed pleasantly, and moved towards the door.

‘Vara,’ said Father Concha.

‘Yes, reverendo.’

‘If I meet your wife in Madrid, what shall I say to her?’

Concepçion turned and looked into the smiling face of the old priest.

‘In Madrid, reverendo?  How can you think of such a thing?  My wife lives in Algeciras, and at times, see you—’ he stopped, casting his eyes up to the ceiling and fetching an exaggerated sigh, ‘at times my heart aches.  But now I must get to the saddle.  What a thing is Duty, reverendo!  Duty!  God be with your Excellencies.’

And he hurried out of the room.

‘If you would make a thief honest, trust him,’ said Concha, when the door was closed.

In less than an hour Concepçion was on the road accompanied by two troopers, who were ready enough to travel in company with a man of his reputation.  For in Spain, if one cannot be a bull-fighter it is good to be a smuggler.  At sunset the great heat culminated in a thunderstorm, which drew a veil of heavy cloud across the sky, and night fell before its time.

The horsemen had covered two-thirds of their journey when he whom they followed came in sight of the lights of Toledo, set upon a rock like the jewels in a lady’s ring, and almost surrounded by the swift Tagus.  Conyngham’s horse was tired, and stumbled more than once on the hill by which the traveller descends to the great bridge and the gate that Wamba built thirteen hundred years ago.

Through this gate he passed into the city, which was a city of the dead, with its hundred ruined churches, its empty palaces and silent streets.  Ichabod is written large over all these tokens of a bygone glory; where the Jews flying from Jerusalem first set foot; where the Moor reigned unmolested for nearly four hundred years; where the Goth and the Roman and the great Spaniard of the middle ages have trod on each other’s heels.  Truly these worn stones have seen the greatness of the greatest nations of the world.

A single lamp hung slowly swinging in the arch of Wamba’s Gate, and the streets were but ill lighted with an oil lantern at an occasional corner.  Conyngham had been in Toledo before, and knew his way to the inn under the shadow of the great Alcazar, now burnt and ruined.  Here he left his horse; for the streets of Toledo are so narrow and tortuous, so ill-paved and steep, that wheel traffic is almost unknown, while a horse can with difficulty keep his feet on the rounded cobble stones.  In this city men go about their business on foot, which makes the streets as silent as the deserted houses.

Julia had selected a spot which was easy enough to find, and Conyngham, having supped, made his way thither without asking for directions.

‘It is at all events worth trying,’ he said to himself, ‘and she can scarcely have forgotten that I saved her life on the Garonne as well as at Ronda.’

But there is often in a woman’s life one man who can make her forget all.  The streets were deserted, for it was a cold night, and the cafés were carefully closed against the damp air.  No one stirred in the Calle Pedro Martir, and Conyngham peered into the shadow of the high wall of the Church of San Tome in vain.  Then he heard the soft tread of muffled feet, and turning on his heel realised Julia’s treachery in a flash of thought.  He charged to meet the charge of his assailants.  Two of them went down like felled trees, but there were others—four others—who fell on him silently like hounds upon a fox, and in a few moments all was quiet again in the Calle Pedro Martir.

‘Les barrières servent à indiquer où il faut passer.’

An hour’s ride to the west of Toledo, on the road to Torrijos and Talavera, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the village of Galvez, two men sat in the shadow of a great rock, and played cards.  They played quietly and without vociferation, illustrating the advantages of a minute coinage.  They had gambled with varying fortune since the hour of the siesta, and a sprinkling of cigarette ends on the bare rocks around them testified to the indulgence in a kindred vice.

The elder of the two men glanced from time to time over his shoulder, and down towards the dusty high road which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape.  The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear.  Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places.  That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels.  They were clad in cotton—dusky white breeches, dusky blue tunics—a sort of undress, tempered by the vicissitudes of a long war and the laxity of discipline engendered by political trouble at home.

They had left their horses in the stable of a venta, hidden among ilex trees by the roadside, and had clambered to this point of vantage above the highway, to pass the afternoon after the manner of their race.  For the Spaniard will be found playing cards amid the wreck of the world and in the intervals between the stupendous events of the last day.

‘He comes,’ said the elder man at length, as he leisurely shuffled the greasy cards.  ‘I hear his horse’s hoofs.’

And, indeed, the great silence which seems to brood over the uplands of Spain—the silence, as it were, of an historic past and a dead present—was broken by the distant regular beat of hoofs.

The trooper who had spoken was a bullet-headed Castilian, with square jaw and close-set eyes.  His companion, a younger man, merely nodded his head, and studied the cards which had just been dealt to him.  The game progressed, and Concepçion Vara, on the Toledo road, approached at a steady trot.  This man showed to greater advantage on horseback and beneath God’s open sky than in the streets of a city.  Here, in the open and among the mountains, he held his head erect and faced the world, ready to hold his own against it.  In the streets he wore a furtive air, and glanced from left to right fearing recognition.

He now took his tired horse to the stable of the little venta, where, with his usual gallantry, he assisted a hideous old hag to find a place in the stalls.  While uttering a gay compliment, he deftly secured for his mount a feed of corn which was much in excess of that usually provided for the money.

‘Ah!’ he said, as he tipped the measure; ‘I can always tell when a woman has been pretty; but with you, señora, no such knowledge is required.  You will have your beauty for many years yet.’

Thus Vara and his horse fared ever well upon the road.  He lingered at the stable door, knowing perhaps that corn poured into the manger may yet find its way back to the bin, and then turned his steps towards the mountain.

The cards were still falling with a whispering sound upon the rock selected as a table, and, with the spirit of a true sportsman, Concepçion waited until the hand was played out before imparting his news.

‘It is well,’ he said at length.  ‘A carriage has been ordered from a friend of mine in Toledo to take the road to-night to Talavera—and Talavera is on the way to Lisbon.  What did I tell you?’

The two soldiers nodded.  One was counting his gains, which amounted to almost threepence.  The loser wore a brave air of indifference, as behoved a reckless soldier taking loss or gain in a Spartan spirit.

‘There will be six men,’ continued Concepçion.  ‘Two on horseback, two on the box, two inside the carriage with their prisoner—my friend.’

‘Ah!’ said the younger soldier thoughtfully.

Concepçion looked at him.

‘What have you in your mind?’ he asked.

‘I was wondering how three men could best kill six.’

‘Out of six,’ said the older man, ‘there is always one who runs away.  I have found it so in my experience.’

‘And of five there is always one who cannot use his knife,’ added Concepçion.

Still the younger soldier, who had medals all across his chest, shook his head.

‘I am afraid,’ he said.  ‘I am always afraid before I fight.’

Concepçion looked at the man whom General Vincente had selected from a brigade of tried soldiers, and gave a little upward jerk of the head.

‘With me,’ he said, ‘it is afterwards—when all is over.  Then my hand shakes, and the wet trickles down my face.’

He laughed, and spread out his hands.

‘And yet,’ he said gaily, ‘it is the best game of all—is it not so?’

The troopers shrugged their shoulders.  One may have too much of even the best game.

‘The carriage is ordered for eight o’clock,’ continued the practical Concepçion, rolling a cigarette, which he placed behind his ear where a clerk would carry his pen.  ‘Those who take the road when the night-birds come abroad have something to hide.  We will see what they have in their carriage, eh?  The horses are hired for the journey to Galvez, where a relay is doubtless ordered.  It will be a fine night for a journey.  There is a half moon, which is better than the full for those who use the knife; but the Galvez horses will not be required, I think.’

The younger soldier, upon whose shoulder gleamed the stars of a rapid promotion, looked up to the sky, where a few fleecy clouds were beginning to gather above the setting sun like sheep about a gate.

‘A half moon for the knife and a full moon for firearms,’ he said.

‘Yes; and they will shoot quick enough if we give them the chance,’ said Concepçion.  ‘They are Carlists!  There is a river between this and Galvez—a little stream such as we have in Andalusia—so small that there is only a ford and no bridge.  The bed of the river is soft; the horses will stop, or, at all events, must go at the walking pace.  Across the stream are a few trees’ (he paused, illustrating his description with rapid gestures and an imaginary diagram drawn upon the rock with the forefinger), ‘ilex, and here, to the left, some pines.  The stream runs thus from north-east to south-west.  This bank is high, and over here are low-lying meadows where pigs feed.’

He looked up, and the two soldiers nodded.  The position lay before them like a bird’s-eye view; and Concepçion, in whom Spain had perhaps lost a guerilla general, had only set eyes on the spot once as he rode past it.

‘This matter is best settled on foot; is it not so?  We cross the stream, and tie our horses to the pine trees.  I will recross the water, and come back to meet the carriage at the top of the hill—here.  The horsemen will be in advance.  We will allow them to cross the stream.  The horses will come out of the water slowly, or I know nothing of horses.  As they step up the incline, you take their riders, and remember to give them the chance of running away.  In midstream I will attack the two on the box, pulling him who is not driving into the water by his legs, and giving him the blade in the right shoulder above the lung.  He will think himself dead, but should recover.  Then you must join me.  We shall be three to three, unless the Englishman’s hands are loose; then we shall be four to three, and need do no man any injury.  The Englishman is as strong as two, and quick with it, as big men rarely are.’

‘Do you take a hand?’ asked the Castilian, fingering the cards.

‘No; I have affairs.  Continue your game.’

So the sun went down, and the two soldiers continued their game, while Concepçion sat beside them and slowly, lovingly sharpened his knife on a piece of slate which he carried in his pocket for the purpose.

After sunset there usually arises a cold breeze which blows across the table-lands of Castile quite gently and unobtrusively.  A local proverb says of this wind that it will extinguish a man but not a candle.  When this arose, the three men descended the mountain-side and sat down to a simple if highly-flavoured meal provided by the ancient mistress of the venta.  At half-past eight, when there remained nothing of the day but a faint greenish light in the western sky, the little party mounted their horses and rode away towards Galvez.

‘’Tis better,’ said Concepçion, with a meaning and gallant bow to the hostess.  ‘’Tis for my peace of mind.  I am but a man.’

Then he haggled over the price of the supper.

They rode forward to the ford described by Concepçion, and there made their preparations—carefully and coolly—as men recognising the odds against them.  The half moon was just rising as the soldiers splashed through the water leading Concepçion’s horse, he remaining on the Toledo side of the river.

‘The saints protect us!’ said the nervous soldier, and his hand shook on the bridle.  His companion smiled at the recollection of former fights passed through together.  It is well, in love and war, to beware of him who says he is afraid.

Shortly after nine o’clock the silence of that deserted plain was broken by a distant murmur, which presently shaped itself into the beat of horses’ feet.  To this was added soon the rumble of wheels.  The elder soldier put a whole cigarette into his mouth and chewed it.  The younger man made no movement now.  They crouched low at their posts one on each side of the ford.  Concepçion was across the river, but they could not see him.  In Andalusia they say that a contrabandist can conceal himself behind half a brick.

The two riders were well in front of the carriage, and, as had been foreseen, the horses lingered on the rise of the bank as if reluctant to leave the water without having tasted it.  In a moment the younger soldier had his man out of the saddle, raising his own knee sharply as the man fell, so that the falling head and the lifted knee came into deadly contact.  It was a trick well known to the trooper, who let the insensible form roll to the ground, and immediately darted down the bank to the stream.  The other soldier was chasing his opponent up the hill, shelling him, as he rode away, with oaths and stones.

In mid-stream the clumsy travelling carriage had come to a standstill.  The driver on the box, having cast down his reins, was engaged in imploring the assistance of a black-letter saint, upon which assistance he did not hesitate to put a price, in candles.  There was a scurrying in the water, which was about two feet deep, where Concepçion was settling accounts with the man who had been seated by the driver’s side.  A half-choked scream of pain appeared to indicate that Concepçion had found the spot he sought, above the right lung, and that amiable smuggler now rose dripping from the flood and hurried to the carriage.

‘Conyngham!’ he shouted, laying aside that ceremony upon which he never set great store.

‘Yes,’ answered a voice from within.  ‘Is that you, Concepçion?’

‘Of course; throw them out.’

‘But the door is locked,’ answered Conyngham in a muffled voice.  And the carriage began to rock and crack upon its springs, as if an earthquake were taking place inside it.

‘The window is good enough for such rubbish,’ said Concepçion.  As he spoke a man, violently propelled from within, came head foremost, and most blasphemously vociferous, into Concepçion’s arms, who immediately, and with the rapidity of a terrier, had him by the throat and forced him under water.

‘You have hold of my leg—you, on the other side,’ shouted Conyngham from the turmoil within.

‘A thousand pardons, señor!’ said the soldier, and took a new grip of another limb.

Concepçion, holding his man under water, heard the sharp crack of another head upon the soldier’s kneecap, and knew that all was well.

‘That is all?’ he inquired.

‘That is all,’ replied the soldier, who did not seem at all nervous now.  ‘And we have killed no one.’

‘Put a knife into that son of a mule who prays upon the box there,’ said Concepçion judicially.  ‘This is no time for prayer.  Just where the neck joins the shoulder—that is a good place.’

And a sudden silence reigned upon the box.

‘Pull the carriage to the bank,’ commanded Concepçion.  ‘There is no need for the English Excellency to wet his feet.  He might catch a cold.’

They all made their way to the bank, where, in the dim moonlight, one man sat nursing his shoulder while another lay, at length, quite still, upon the pebbles.

The young soldier laid a second victim to the same deadly trick beside him, while Concepçion patted his foe kindly on the back.

‘It is well,’ he said, ‘you have swallowed water.  You will be sick, and then you will be well.  But if you move from that spot I will let the water out another way.’

And, laughing pleasantly at this delicate display of humour, he turned to help Conyngham, who was clambering out of the carriage window.

‘Whom have you with you?’ asked Conyngham.

‘Two honest soldiers of General Vincente’s division.  You see, señor, you have good friends.’

‘Yes, I see that.’

‘One of them,’ said Concepçion meaningly, ‘is at Toledo at the moment, journeying after you.

‘Ah!’

‘The Señor Pleydell.’

‘Then we will go back to meet him.’

‘I thought so,’ said Concepçion.

‘Wherein I am false I am honest—not true to be true.’

‘I will sing you a contrabandista song,’ said Concepçion, as the party rode towards Toledo in the moonlight.  ‘The song we—they sing when the venture has been successful.  You may hear it any dark night in the streets of Gaucin.’

‘Sing,’ said the older soldier, ‘if it is in your lungs.  For us—we prefer to travel silent.’

Conyngham, mounted on the horse from which the Carlist rider had been dragged unceremoniously enough, rode a few paces in front.  The carriage had been left behind at the venta, where no questions were asked, and the injured men revived readily enough.

‘It is well,’ answered Concepçion, in no way abashed.  ‘I will sing.  In Andalusia we can all sing.  The pigs sing better there than the men of Castile.’

It was after midnight when the party rode past the Church of the Cristo de la Vega, and faced the long hill that leads to the gate Del Cambron.  Above them towered the city of Toledo—silent and dreamlike.  Concepçion had ceased singing now, and the hard breathing of the horses alone broke the silence.  The Tagus, emerging here from rocky fastness, flowed noiselessly away to the west—a gleaming ribbon laid across the breast of the night.  In the summer it is no uncommon thing for travellers to take the road by night in Spain, and although many doubtless heard the clatter of horses’ feet on the polished cobble stones of the city, none rose from bed to watch the horsemen pass.

At that time Toledo possessed, and indeed to the present day can boast of, but one good inn—a picturesque old house in the Plaza de Zocodover, overhung by the mighty Alcazar.  Here Cervantes must have eaten and Lazarillo de Tormes no doubt caroused.  Here those melancholy men and mighty humorists must have delighted the idler by their talk.  Concepçion soon aroused the sleeping porter, and the great doors being thrown open, the party passed into the courtyard without quitting the saddle.

‘It is,’ said Concepçion, ‘an English Excellency and his suite.’

‘We have another such in the house,’ answered the sleepy doorkeeper, ‘though he travels with but one servant.’

‘We know that, my friend, which is the reason why we patronise your dog-hole of an inn.  See that the two Excellencies breakfast together at a table apart in the morning.’

‘You will have matters to speak about with the Señor Pleydell in the morning,’ said Concepçion, as he unpacked Conyngham’s luggage a few minutes later.

‘Yes, I should like to speak to Señor Pleydell.’

‘And I,’ said Concepçion, turning round with a brush in his hand, ‘should like a moment’s conversation with Señor Larralde.’

‘Ah!’

‘Yes, Excellency, he is in this matter too.  But the Señor Larralde is so modest—so modest!  He always remains in the background.’

In the tents of Kedar men sleep as sound as those who lie on soft pillows, and Conyngham was late astir the next morning.  Sir John Pleydell was, it transpired, already at his breakfast, and had ordered his carriage for an early hour to take the road to Talavera.  It was thus evident that Sir John knew nothing of the arrival of his fellow-countryman at midnight.

The cold face of the great lawyer wore a look of satisfaction as he sat at a small table in the patio of the hotel and drank his coffee.  Conyngham watched him for a moment from the balcony of the courtyard, himself unseen, while Concepçion stood within his master’s bedroom, and rubbed his brown hands together in anticipation of a dramatic moment.  Conyngham passed down the stone steps and crossed the patio with a gay smile.  Sir John recognised him as he emerged from the darkness of the stairway, but his face betrayed neither surprise nor fear.  There was a look in the grey eyes, however, that seemed to betoken doubt.  Such a look a man might wear who had long travelled with assurance upon a road which he took to be the right one, and then at a turning found himself in a strange country with no landmark to guide him.

Sir John Pleydell had always outwitted his fellows.  He had, in fact, been what is called a successful man—a little cleverer, a little more cunning than those around him.

He looked up now at Conyngham, who was drawing forward a chair to the neighbouring table, and the cold eye, which had been the dread of many a criminal, wavered.

‘The waiter has set my breakfast near to yours,’ said Conyngham, unconcernedly seating himself.

And Concepçion in the balcony above cursed the English for a cold-blooded race.  This was not the sort of meeting he had anticipated.  He could throw a knife very prettily, and gave a short sigh of regret as he turned to his peaceful duties.

Conyngham examined the simple fare provided for him, and then looked towards his companion with that cheerfulness which is too rare in this world; for it is born of a great courage, and outward circumstances cannot affect it.  Sir John Pleydell had lost all interest in his meal, and was looking keenly at Conyngham—dissecting, as it were, his face, probing his mind, searching through the outward manner of the man, and running helplessly against a motive which he failed to understand.

‘I have in my long experience found that all men may be divided into two classes,’ he said acidly.

‘Fools and knaves?’ suggested Conyngham.

‘You have practised at the Bar,’ parenthetically.

Conyngham shrugged his shoulders.

‘Unsuccessfully—anybody can do that.’

‘Which are you—a fool or a knave?’ asked Sir John.

And suddenly Conyngham pitied him.  For no man is proof against the quick sense of pathos aroused by the sight of man, or dumb animal, baffled.  At the end of his life Sir John had engaged upon the greatest quest of it—an unworthy quest, no doubt, but his heart was in it—and he was an old man, though be bore his years well enough.

‘Perhaps that is the mistake you have always made,’ said Conyngham gravely.  ‘Perhaps men are not to be divided into two classes.  There may be some who only make mistakes, Sir John.’

Unconsciously he had lapsed into the advocate, as those who have once played the part are apt to do.  This was not his own cause, but Geoffrey Horner’s.  And he served his friend so thoroughly that for the moment he really was the man whose part he had elected to play.  Sir John Pleydell was no mean foe.  Geoffrey Horner had succeeded in turning aside the public suspicion, and in the eternal march of events, of which the sound is louder as the world grows older and hollower, the murder of Alfred Pleydell had been forgotten by all save his father.  Conyngham saw the danger, and never thought to avoid it.  What had been undertaken half in jest would be carried out in deadly earnest.

‘Mistakes,’ said Sir John sceptically.  In dealing with the seamy side of life men come to believe that it is all stitches.

‘Which they may pass the rest of their lives in regretting.’

Sir John looked sharply at his companion, with suspicion dawning in his eyes again.  It was Conyngham’s tendency to overplay his part.  Later, when he became a soldier, and found that path in life for which he was best fitted, his superior officers and the cooler tacticians complained that he was over-eager, and in battle outpaced the men he led.

‘Then you see now that it was a mistake?’ suggested Sir John.  In cross-examinations the suggestions of Sir John Pleydell are remembered in certain courts of justice to this day.

‘Of course.’

‘To have mixed yourself in such an affair at all?’

‘Yes.’

Sir John seemed to be softening, and Conyngham began to see a way out of this difficulty which had never suggested itself to him before.

‘Such mistakes have to be paid for—and the law assesses the price.’

Conyngham shrugged his shoulders.

‘It is easy enough to say you are sorry—the law can make no allowance for regret.’

Conyngham turned his attention to his breakfast, deeming it useless to continue the topic.

‘It was a mistake to attend the meeting at Durham—you admit that?’ continued Sir John.

‘Yes—I admit that, if it is any satisfaction to you.’

‘Then it was worse than a mistake to actually lead the men out to my house for the purpose of breaking the windows.  It was almost a crime.  I would suggest to you, as a soldier for the moment, to lead a charge up a steep hill against a body of farm labourers and others entrenched behind a railing.’

‘That is a mere matter of opinion.’

‘And yet you did that,’ said Sir John.  ‘If you are going to break the law you should insure success before embarking on your undertaking.’

Conyngham made no answer.

‘It was also a stupid error, if I may say so, to make your way back to Durham by Ravensworth, where you were seen and recognised.  You see I have a good case against you, Mr. Conyngham.’

‘Yes, I admit you have a good case against me, but you have not caught me yet.’

Sir John Pleydell looked at him coldly.

‘You do not even take the trouble to deny the facts I have named.’

‘Why should I, when they are true?’ asked Conyngham carelessly.

Sir John Pleydell leant back in his chair.

‘I have classified you,’ he said with a queer laugh.

‘Ah!’ answered Conyngham, suddenly uneasy.

‘Yes—as a fool.’

He leant forward with a deprecating gesture of his thin white hand.

‘Do not be offended,’ he said, ‘and do not reproach yourself for having given your case away.  You never had a case, Mr. Conyngham.  Chartists are not made of your material at all.  As soon as you gave me your card in Madrid, I had a slight suspicion.  I thought you were travelling under a false name.  It was plain to the merest onlooker that you were not the man I sought.  You are too easy-going, too much of a gentleman to be a Chartist.  You are screening somebody else.  You have played the part well, and with an admirable courage and fidelity.  I wish my boy Alfred had had a few such friends as you.  But you are a fool, Mr. Conyngham.  No man on earth is worth the sacrifice that you have made.’

Conyngham slowly stirred his coffee.  He was meditating.

‘You have pieced together a very pretty tale,’ he said at length.  ‘Some new scheme to get me within the reach of the English law, no doubt.’

‘It is a pretty tale—too pretty for practical life.  And if you want proofs I will mention the fact that the Chartist meeting was at Chester-le-Street, not Durham; that my house stands in a hollow and not on a hill; that you could not possibly go to Durham viâ Ravensworth, for they lie in opposite directions.  No, Mr. Conyngham, you are not the man I seek.  And, strange to say, I took a liking to you when I first saw you.  I am no believer in instinct, or mutual sympathy, or any such sentimental nonsense.  I do not believe in much, Mr. Conyngham, and not in human nature at all.  I know too much about it for that.  But there must have been something in that liking for you at first sight.  I wish you no harm, Mr. Conyngham.  I am like Balaam—I came to curse, and now stay to bless.  Or, perhaps, I am more like Balaam’s companion and adviser—I bray too much.’

He sat back again with a queer smile.

‘You may go home to England to-morrow if you care to,’ he added, after a pause, ‘and if that affair is ever raked up against you I will be your counsel, if you will have me.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You do not want to go home to England?’ suggested Sir John, whose ear was as quick as his eye.

‘No, I have affairs in Spain.’

‘Or—perhaps a castle here.  Beware of such—I once had one.’

And the cold grey face softened for an instant.  It seemed at times as if there were after all a man behind that marble casing.

‘A man who can secure such a friendship as yours has proved itself to be,’ said Sir John after a short silence, ‘can scarcely be wholly bad.  He may, as you say, have made a mistake.  I promise nothing; but perhaps I will make no further attempts to find him.’

Conyngham was silent.  To speak would have been to admit.

‘So far as I am concerned,’ said Sir John, rising, ‘you are safe in this or any country.  But I warn you—you have a dangerous enemy in Spain.’

‘I know,’ answered Conyngham, with a laugh, ‘Mr. Esteban Larralde.  I once undertook to deliver a letter for him.  It was not what he represented it to be, and after I had delivered it he began to suspect me of having read it.  He is kind enough to consider me of some importance in the politics of this country owing to the information I am supposed to possess.  I know nothing of the contents of the letter, but I want to regain it—if only for a few moments.  That is the whole story, and that is how matters stand between Larralde and myself.’

‘Il s’en faut bien que l’innocence trouve autant de protection que le crime.’

For those minded to leave Spain at this time, there was but one route, namely, the south, for the northern exits were closed by the Carlists, still in power there, though thinning fast.  Indeed, Don Carlos was now illustrating the fact, which any may learn by the study of the world’s history, that it is not the great causes, but the great men, who have made and destroyed nations.  Nearly half of Spain was for Don Carlos.  The Church sided with him, and the best soldiers were those who, unpaid, unfed, and half clad, fought on the southern slopes of the Pyrenees for a man who dared not lead them.

Sir John Pleydell had intended crossing the frontier into Portugal, following the carriage conveying his prisoner to the seaport of Lisbon, where he anticipated no difficulty in finding a ship captain who would be willing to carry Conyngham to England.  All this, however, had been frustrated by so unimportant a person as Concepçion Vara, and the carriage ordered for nine o’clock to proceed to Talavera now stood in the courtyard of the hotel, while the Baronet in his lonely apartment sat and wondered what he should do next.  He had dealt with justice all his life, and had ensued it not from love, but as a matter of convenience and a means of livelihood.  From the mere habit, he now desired to do justice to Conyngham.

‘See if you can find out for me the whereabouts of General Vincente at the moment, and let the carriage wait,’ he said to his servant, a valet-courier of taciturn habit.

The man was absent about half an hour, and returned with a face that promised little.

‘There is a man in the hotel, sir,’ he said, ‘the servant of Mr. Conyngham, who knows, but will not tell me.  I am told, however, that a lady living in Toledo, a Contessa Barenna, will undoubtedly have the information.  General Vincente was lately in Madrid, but his movements are so rapid and uncertain, that he has become a by-word in Spain.’

‘So I understand.  I will call on this Contessa this afternoon, unless you can get the information elsewhere during the morning.  I shall not want the carriage.’

Sir John walked slowly to the window, deep in thought.  He was interested in Conyngham, despite himself.  It is possible that he had not hitherto met a man capable of so far forgetting his own interests as to undertake a foolish and dangerous escapade without anything in the nature of gain or advantage to recommend it.  The windows of the hotel of the Comercio in Toledo look out upon the market-place, and Sir John, who was an indoor man, and mentally active enough to be intensely bored at times, frequently used this opportunity of studying Spanish life.

He was looking idly through the vile panes, when an old priest passed by, and glanced up beneath shaggy brows.

‘Seen that man before,’ said Sir John.

‘Ah!’ muttered Father Concha, as he hurried on towards the Palazzo Barenna.  ‘So far, so good.  Where the fox is, will be found the stolen fowl.’

Concepçion Vara, who was saddling his horse in the stable yard of the inn, saw the Padre pass.

‘Ah, clever one!’ he muttered, ‘with your jokes about my wife.  Now you may make a false journey for all the help you receive from me.’

And a few minutes later Concepçion rode across the Bridge of Alcantara, some paces behind Conyngham, who deemed it wise to return to his duties at Madrid without delay.

Despite the great heat on the plains, which, indeed, made it almost dangerous to travel at midday, the streets of Toledo were cool and shady enough, as Sir John Pleydell traversed them in search of the Palazzo Barenna.  The Contessa was in, and the Englishman was ushered into a vast room, which even the taste of the day could not entirely deprive of its mediæval grandeur.  Sir John explained to the servant in halting Spanish that his name was unknown to the Señora Barenna, but that—a stranger in some slight difficulty—he had been recommended to seek her assistance.

Sir John was an imposing-looking man, with that grand air which enables some men not only to look, but to get over a wall while an insignificant wight may not so much as approach the gate.  The señora’s curiosity did the rest.  In a few minutes the rustle of silk made Sir John turn from the contemplation of a suit of armour.

‘Madame speaks French?’

‘But yes, señor.’

Madame Barenna glanced towards a chair, which Sir John hastened to bring forward.  He despised her already, and she admired his manner vastly.

‘I have taken the immense liberty of intruding myself upon your notice, Madame.’

‘Not to sell me a Bible?’ exclaimed Señora Barenna, with her fan upheld in warning.

‘A Bible!  I believe I have one at home, in England, Madame, but—’

‘It is well,’ said Madame sinking back and fanning herself rather faintly.  ‘Excuse my fears.  But there is an Englishman—what is his name?  I forget.’

‘Borrow.’

‘Yes; that is it, Borrow.  And he sells Bibles; and Father Concha, my confessor, a bear, but a holy man—a holy bear, as one might say—has forbidden me to buy one.  I am so afraid of disobeying him, by heedlessness or forgetfulness.  There are, it appears, some things in the Bible which one ought not to read, and one naturally—’

She finished the sentence with a shrug, and an expressive gesture of the fan.

‘One naturally desires to read them,’ suggested Sir John.  ‘The privilege of all Eve’s daughters, Madame.’

Señora Barenna treated the flatterer to what the French call a fin sourire, and wondered how long Julia would stay away.  This man would pay her a compliment in another moment.

‘I merely called on the excuse of a common friendship, to ask if you can tell me the whereabouts of General Vincente,’ said Sir John, stating his business in haste and when the opportunity presented itself.

‘Is it politics?’ asked the lady, with a hasty glance round the room.

‘No, it is scarcely politics; but why do you ask?  You are surely too wise, Madame, to take part in such.  It is a woman’s mission to please—and when it is so easy!’

He waved his thin white hand in completion of a suggestion which made his hearer bridle her stout person.

‘No, no,’ she whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the door.  ‘No; it is my daughter.  Ah! señor, you can scarce imagine what it is to live upon a volcano!’

And she pointed to the oaken floor with her fan.  Sir John deemed it wise to confine his display of sympathy to a glance of the deepest concern.

‘No,’ he said; ‘it is merely a personal matter.  I have a communication to make to my friend General Vincente or to his daughter.’

‘To Estella?’

‘To the Señorita Estella.’

‘Do you think her beautiful?  Some do, you know.  Eyes—I admit—yes, lovely.’

‘I admire the señorita exceedingly.’

‘Ah yes, yes.  You have not seen my daughter, have you, señor?  Julia—she rather resembles Estella.’

Señora Barenna paused and examined her fan with a careless air.

‘Some say,’ she went on, apparently with reluctance, ‘that Julia is—well—has some advantages over Estella.  But I do not, of course.  I admire Estella, excessively—oh yes, yes.’

And the señora’s dark eyes searched Sir John’s face.  They might have found more in sculptured marble.

‘Do you know where she is?’ asked Sir John, almost bluntly.  Like a workman who has mistaken his material, he was laying aside his finer conversational tools.

‘Well, I believe they arrive in Toledo this evening.  I cannot think why.  But with General Vincente one never knows.  He is so pleasant, so playful—such a smile—but you know him.  Well, they say in Spain that he is always where he is wanted.  Ah!’ Madame paused and cast her eyes up to the ceiling, ‘what it is to be wanted somewhere, señor.’

And she gave him the benefit of one of her deepest sighs.  Sir John mentally followed the direction of her glance, and wondered what the late Count thought about it.

‘Yes, I am deeply interested in Estella—as indeed is natural, for she is my niece.  She has no mother, and the General has such absurd ideas.  He thinks that a girl is capable of choosing a husband for herself.  But to you—an Englishman—such an idea is naturally not astonishing.  I am told that in your country it is the girls who actually propose marriage.’

‘Not in words, Madame—not more in England than elsewhere.’

‘Ah,’ said Madame, looking at him doubtfully, and thinking, despite herself, of Father Concha.

Sir John rose from the chair he had taken at the señora’s silent invitation.

‘Then I may expect the General to arrive at my hotel this evening,’ he said.  ‘I am staying at the Comercio, the only hotel, as I understand, in Toledo.’

‘Yes, he will doubtless descend there.  Do you know Frederick Conyngham, señor?’

‘Yes.’

‘But everyone knows him!’ exclaimed the lady vivaciously.  ‘Tell me how it is.  A most pleasant young man, I allow you—but without introductions and quite unconnected.  Yet he has friends everywhere.’

She paused and, closing her fan, leant forward in an attitude of intense confidence and secrecy.

‘And how about his little affair?’ she whispered.

‘His little affair, Madame?’

‘De cœur,’ explained the lady, tapping her own breast with an eloquent fan.

‘Estella,’ she whispered after a pause.

‘Ah!’ said Sir John, as if he knew too much about it to give an opinion.  And he took his leave.

‘That is the sort of woman to break one’s heart in the witness box,’ he said as he passed out into the deserted street, and Señora Barenna, in the great room with the armour, reflected complacently that the English lord had been visibly impressed.

General Vincente and Estella arrived at the hotel in the evening, but did not of course appear in the public rooms.  The dusty old travelling carriage was placed in a quiet corner of the courtyard of the hotel, and the General appeared on this, as on all occasions, to court retirement and oblivion.  Unlike many of his brothers-in-arms, he had no desire to catch the public eye.

‘There is doubtless something astir,’ said the waiter, who, in the intervals of a casual attendance on Sir John, spoke of these things, cigarette in mouth.  ‘There is doubtless something astir, since General Vincente is on the road.  They call him the Stormy Petrel, for when he appears abroad there usually follows a disturbance.’

Sir John sent his servant to the General’s apartment about eight o’clock in the evening asking permission to present himself.  In reply, the General himself came to Sir John’s room.

‘My dear sir,’ he cried, taking both the Englishman’s hands in an affectionate grasp, ‘to think that you were in the hotel and that we did not dine together.  Come, yes, come to our poor apartment, where Estella awaits the pleasure of renewing your acquaintance.’

‘Then the señorita,’ said Sir John, following his companion along the dimly-lighted passage, ‘has her father’s pleasant faculty of forgetting any little contretemps of the past?’

‘Ask her,’ exclaimed the General in his cheery way.  ‘Ask her.’  And he threw open the door of the dingy salon they occupied.

Estella was standing with her back to the window, and her attitude suggested that she had not sat down since she had heard of Sir John’s presence in the hotel.

‘Señorita,’ said the Englishman, with that perfect knowledge of the world which usually has its firmest basis upon indifference to criticism, ‘señorita, I have come to avow a mistake and to make my excuses.’

‘It is surely unnecessary,’ said Estella, rather coldly.

‘Say rather,’ broke in the General in his smoothest way, ‘that you have come to take a cup of coffee with us and to tell us your news.’

Sir John took the chair which the General brought forward.

‘At all events,’ he said, still addressing Estella, ‘it is probably a matter of indifference to you, as it is merely an opinion expressed by myself which I wish to retract.  When I first had the pleasure of meeting you, I took it upon myself to speak of a guest in your father’s house, fortunately in the presence of that guest himself, and I now wish to tell you that what I said does not apply to Frederick Conyngham himself, but to another whom Conyngham is screening.  He has not confessed so much to me, but I have satisfied myself that he is not the man I seek.  You, General, who know more of the world than the señorita, and have been in it almost as long as I have, can bear me out in the statement that the motives of men are not so easy to discern as younger folks imagine.  I do not know what induced Conyngham to undertake this thing; probably he entered into it in a spirit of impetuous and reckless generosity, which would only be in keeping with his character.  I only know that he has carried it out with a thoroughness and daring worthy of all praise.  If such a tie were possible between an old man and a young, I should like to be able to claim Mr. Conyngham as a friend.  There, señorita—thank you, I will take coffee.  I made the accusation in your presence.  I retract it before you.  It is, as you see, a small matter.’

‘But it is of small matters that life is made up,’ put in the General in his deferential way.  ‘Our friend,’ he went on after a pause, ‘is unfortunate in misrepresenting himself.  We also have a little grudge against him—a little matter of a letter which has not been explained.  I admit that I should like to see that letter.’

‘And where is it?’ asked Sir John.

‘Ah!’ replied Vincente, with a shrug of the shoulders and a gay little laugh, ‘who can tell?  Perhaps in Toledo, my dear sir—perhaps in Toledo.’